Five groups joined me for a facilitated break-out session at VizThink 08 to explore the various aspects that make visuals speak.

The first session I facilitated was on Monday afternoon. By this time, I knew the community that came together for this event was special. The only other times I have been with so many people interested in visuals was when I worked at Penland School of Craft and attended RISD. The difference this time was this audience also shared an interest in the intersection of visuals and business.

I wanted to get a bit more information about them as a group, so I drew a quick mini-assessment on the Nomad Rolling Dry Erase Panel provided by Kinetic Energies.

The top chart column asks for people to identify the sector they work in: non-profit, education, government , or corporate. The rows ask about role: small business owner, independent consultant, individual contributor, manager, or executive. The largest number of participants were small business owners and individual contributors working in a corporate environment.

The section at the bottom asked about the topics they were most interested in. The ones that came out at top were:

• visual literacy
• visual language
• creativity and innovation
• creating visual tools

Creating Individual Images

Each table had a VisualsSpeak ImageSet containing 200 photographs. We used the framing question: What makes visuals speak? Each person selected photos and assembled them on a piece of construction paper.

We looked at the patterns in how each individual constructed their image on the page.

• Did they stay within the rectangle?
• Did the images overlap?
• Are they aligned with the edges?
• Is the background covered?

Over years of watching people go through this process, we’ve observed most people make similar images in terms of how they assemble their photographs on the page which correlates to how they think. Seeing the difference in how the images are constructed can help people understand each others perspectives.

The stories

Understanding deepens as people share the stories of what the images mean to them. Difference emerges, from what is seen in the individual images to how the images are discussed.

Working in a group

Each group then created an image together to answer: What makes visuals speak? It was up to the members of the group to determine the process they would use. Each group’s process is unique.

Creating an image with other people is different. Suddenly you have to negotiate. Or not, as the case may be. The process and conversations become as important as the product itself.

What does make visuals speak?

Here are five perspectives, along with what I heard from them. What do you think? Anything missing?

Group 1

Group 2

Group 3

Group 4

Group 5

“Artrain USA is America’s Hometown Art Museum. A nonprofit organization, its mission is to enrich lives and build communities through the arts. As an art museum housed in vintage rail cars and traveling via the nation’s railways, Artrain USA brings world class art exhibitions and art education programs to communities and their residents. Artrain USA delivers exceptional opportunities for learning, growth and art appreciation while encouraging the development of local cultural programs and organizations.”

Artrain visited the town I live in. I was very impressed with the quality of art, the way they had installed it in the train, and how the staff engaged us when we were visiting. So I was particularly thrilled when I discovered Artrain was the organization I would be working with for the VizThink Challenge.

A Changing Environment for the Train

With changes in the rail system, Artrain will no longer be able to be pulled around to the various places in the country. Big changes are in store as the organization shifts to delivering services on a set of high tech truck trailers.

Tom Crawford the CEO of VizThink introduced the Artrain team. Debra Polish, the executive director prepared a compelling presentation about the work of Artrain. She was joined by Annie Castellano from Switch, which is the company designing the new trucks. One of the board members, Brian Tolle also joined her to help us better understand the opportunities and challenges Artrain faces in this transition. The challenge they put forth:

• How do we visualize the power of the Artrain experience to engage individual and corporate sponsorship?

There is a 20 minute video of the presentation on the Artrain challenge on the VizThink wiki. They also have an information page where there are more specific details about the transition.

VizThink Challenge

Where do we come in? Tom Crawford challenged three of the VizThink facilitators to participate in a live session.

Session Description: Often, it’s not about the tools we use, but the process we go through to come up with visual thinking solutions. This segment is designed to show just that, and we’ve got three great people to help us with that including Jamie Nast, Christine Martell, and David Sibbet. We’re going to put these three leaders on the spot by bringing them up on stage and presenting them with a real world communications problem. They’ll have never seen it before and have no time to prepare. Their job, with your help, will be to come up with a visual thinking solution, and we’ll look at how they approach it and what they come up with. However, they won’t be in it alone. Each of the tables in the audience will work on the problem too. This segment promises to be a fascinating look into the similarities and differences between visual thinking approaches.

Jamie Nast took six people, and with her breakout session co-facilitator Susie Watson, worked on creating a mind map with Mindjet software. David Sibbet took 12 people, and worked with his facilitation team to come up with a series of graphic murals. You can see a video of the overview of our results on the wiki.

VisualsSpeak’s part

There were almost 400 people at the conference. The other sessions took around 24 people. We had the rest. There were 42 table groups in the room. We gave each group a VisualsSpeak ImageSet containing the same 200 images. They had 30 minutes to select images individually, tell each other the story of the images they selected, then come up with an image together. All in response to the question, how do we visualize the power of the Artrain experience to engage individual and corporate sponsorship?

The VisualsSpeak Data

Each group had a sheet of paper to write a summary of what their table discovered. We numbered the tables, and took photographs of each group image. Two of the tables quickly described their images in the short reporting time each group had in the big session. While the individual stories can be interesting, the real value in the data is in the collective. The patterns across the entire data set is where the deep wisdom lies.

The Data Analysis

What are we looking at? There is information in several places:

• the written reports individually
• the themes across the written reports
• the patterns of how the images are constructed
• the patterns of which images were used

We are pouring through the raw data, and there is some fascinating and insightful things we are seeing already. The next challenge will be how to translate what we are seeing into reports that will be useful to the Artrain team as they move forward. Stay tuned, more to come as the process continues.

Here are more posts written by the VizThink facilitators. VizThink is also collecting all the materials from the conference and putting them up on a wiki, which will serve as one piece of a membership site.

Ryan Coleman is the coordinator for VizThink Toronto. He’s been doing a great job getting his local area inspired about visual thinking. I know I have wanted a community around this aspect of my work for a long time.

• VizThink Wrap-up: Building Visual Thinking Communities

Jamie Nast specializes in mindmapping. I had the pleasure of working a bit with her for the VizThink challenge, which I will be reporting on soon.

• IdeaMap: VizThink Breakout Sessions

Brent Schlenker is someone I have exchanged blog comments with. I’m always interested in meeting people in person to see if my impressions of them formed through their online identities match with face to face. Brent has an edgy humorous online feel, yet I found him to be quite warm and personable live in the room.

• Scott McCloud – Understanding Comics
• CommonCraft – Photo Sharing in Plain English – VizThink08
• VizThink08 – Thoughts from Monday
• VizThink08 – Day 2 – Morning General Session
• VizThink08 – Evening 1 – My search for the VisualThinking eLearning connection

Dan Roam. Bring extra napkins if you are around Dan. He got everyone around him drawing on them. I heard lots of great things about his session.

• Jazzed about napkin sketches

Matthew Homan facilitated several exercises with the almost 400 participants. Having had that experience also, I truly appreciate what he was able to do. He wisely picked things that fit into the short times alloted, yet brought a bit of reflection to an otherwise very crowded schedule.

• Use Haiku to Get to the Point

It’s been a week and I’m still sorting through it all in my mind. It all went by so fast, and there was never enough time to have all the conversations with the amazing people who were there. Not just the facilitators and sponsors, but there were things to learn from every person who attended.

We have a lot of photos and video we are combing through, so there is quite a bit that will be coming. In the meantime, some of the other facilitators, attendees, and sponsors have started to post about the conference.

Luke Wroblewski

• VizThink 08: Influencing Strategy by Design
• VizThink 08: Introducing Visual Thinking to Your Organization
• VizThink 08: Visualizing the Presentation Ecosystem
• VizThink 08: Ethics in Visual Thinking
• VizThink 08: Drawing the Big Picture
• VizThink 08: Bob Horn Interview
• VizThink 08: How to Draw with Dave Gray

Ryan Coleman

• VizThink Wrapup: The Conference in General
• VizThink Conference: Not quite the Wrap-up post yet…

Dan Roam

• First impressions don’t matter

Lee LeFever

• VizThink in Review

Karen Bennett

• Visual summaries
• Trying new things
• Bob Horn at VizThink ’08

Mindjet

• Are you a visual thinker?
  
• Reflections on the VizThink Conference 08